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Topic: MIL's Memoir (Read 12457 times)

We're all getting together for a family gathering in June. This was MIL's idea. She wants us to make a video of all her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren to be shown at her Memorial Service after she dies.

I recently found out that MIL's Memoir material was sent to Ditzy over a year ago to be edited and sent to family members. The material was sent but Ditzy never did anything with it. She might get her nose a bit out of joint when we present the booklet at the gathering but frankly, I don't care.

Nothing in the material is the least embarrassing to MIL and the stories are too good to keep in a folder.

Oh, sorry, I somehow missed that it is to be a surprise in your op. I thought since she thought they had already been distributed (at the holidays) that she knew you were going to fix Ditzy's mistake by distributing them.In that case, then, I wouldn't change anything other than typos. Even misspellings and grammatical mistakes, because they are MIL's words too. That sounds beautiful, I have no grandparents left and I really wish that I had something like this from them. Good luck!

We've just found manuscripts of children's books that MIL wants published. Should I include those?

There are very few family photographs of MIL from the period because, as the third child of five, she was pretty much ignored. Because of extended families, the family tree would have to be about the size of an living room rug to get everybody in.

Thank again to all. We're trying to keep this as simple as possible while including as much as we can. The suggestions are all good and we need to figure out what fits and what doesn't. It will work. It just takes a little time and thought.

I wouldn't include the children's books as part of the memoir. Let that be separate, then maybe you can print out the children's books someday too. But I think it's just distinct from the memoir, which is about MIL's memories and experiences.

I'd do the memoirs now, and keep the children's stories separate. In fact, do them all in one volume, and see about Print-on-demand (such as done through LULU.com), but do all your own layout, art, etc (any artists among the grandkids? Custom goodies!) Don't get sucked into the vanity press market; you can do some nice homegrown book design with desktop publishing. If it were for a wide audience, that's different, but these are lovely hardcopies of sentimental things. Print-on-demand is fantastic for that. You don't need an ISBN, etc... just the basic "upload PDFs, choose book features, print and bind X copies, please."

MIL did her own illustrations. She isn't a great artist but the drawings might have a certain charm for the family.

The stories aren't really anything that would be appealing to modern children. One is a story about how the evergreen trees became evergreens and the other is about a Saint Bernard who was a noted moocher in the town where the family lived.

We'll think about those for the Holiday season.

Again, everybody, thanks for the great stories and excellent suggestions.

It sounds like a lovely idea to professionally reproduce and distribute MIL's writings, recollections, and art. Personally, I balk at the surprise aspect; but I know that's part of your point, so you are the best judge of whether MIL would really like that or not. If I were the writer I would want to know what was being done with my work and how it was going to be distributed. If she already gave it to Ditzy, expecting it to be copied and distributed, she should have no qualms about you doing that job instead, but why keep it a secret? She's apparently hurt to think it already went out and no one cared, so maybe if you say, "Actually, there was a mix-up with Ditzy, and no one got copies. But, we thought we'd do XYZ, and distribute copies at the family reunion this summer! Would you like that?" Then you could ask her if she wanted to do any additional editing, or have you do any, before you print it.

Also, I would suggest making "a lot" of copies, especially if it's just a small booklet. They might get lost or damaged over the years, and you might find that in ten years, someone you wouldn't have even considered interested in it really wants one. Having recently started doing some serious genealogical work for my family, I would treasure something like this even for a somewhat distant relative I never knew, and would want to distribute it further, like by putting it on a personal homepage or a site like Ancestry.com. So perhaps think about future uses like that, and ask MIL if she would be okay with that--you could put a note at the front saying she gives permission to distribute it freely among family and other interested parties, or something.

Also I would make sure you have an electronic copy (like a PDF) that you pass around to basically anyone who has a computer, and back it up several places.

I would leave the authentic voice aspect alone. But I would correct typos and obvious misspellings. A word spelled the way MIL would say it, I'd leave alone. (For example, if she always said 'sammich' rather than 'sandwich', I'd leave it.) If the grammar isn't part of the authentic voice aspect, I'd correct it. But if it was, I'd leave it alone.